Reflection Resurrection

Reflection From Original Project

The process of making an entire infographic about the community that I am going into really
helped teach me about, well, teaching. I learned a lot about how to teach effectively and how to
weave history into something that students actually want to learn. From this, the biggest benefit
of these interviews will definitely be my future students. I can use the information from this
project and use it to spring forward into teaching, armed with tools and skills that can help
educate my future students to the best of my abilities.
I chose the format that I did on my infographic because I wanted the information to be
prominently on display and easy to access. I used a simple design that shows you what you want
to see and in an easy to understand manner. This is also relevant to my artifact, which is a
doctoral thesis with a near same design. All the information you need is easy to see and access
with no fluff or distractions. I learned a lot about history during this project and learned that I
should start looking into ways to connect it with the present day. Students will be able to grasp
the material easier and more comprehensively if they have something that they can relate to the
topic and therefore learn it much better.
I didn’t find any major stumbling blocks along the way with this project and found
everything to run pretty smoothy. I was never bogged down with trying to find an interview
subject or with trying to input information into my infographic, so I would consider this pretty
clean and easy.

Edits For Reflection

The interviews that I conducted went smoothly enough until it came to diving int specific
lingo and terminology used in the historical education field. This is why there were no key terms
in my infographic, I simply did not get anything in my interviews that were translatable into a
“key term.” It wasn’t a fault of the interviewees, I just believe that my questions didn’t warrant
the use of a key term in my project and therefore I wasn’t able to find any. I also had the problem
of scrambling to find a second interview. The interview done with Dr. Speakman was one done
on an emergency basis after I told him that I was trying to find someone for a second interview
and he declared himself my second interview. I wasn’t very prepared nor did I have anything
ready for him specifically in contrast to having a specific set of questions for Professor Kellam. I
believe this interview could have gone much better if I had time to prepare but unfortunately this
was not the case.
The second biggest problem was my artifact. I had, mistakenly, chosen a 320 page
doctoral thesis and I just didn’t have time to read and take in the entire message of the thesis,
which led to some major issues when it came to summarizing and understanding everything that
was necessary for the project. I believe that had I chosen a different artifact, I could have not
only discovered key terms for the project, but I also could have had a better integration of the
artifact into my infographic.
 My process for this project was to start at the very beginning and discover what exactly
historical/educational discourse was. I had to use many resources and talk to a lot of people
informally, from students in the history department (mainly friends, I’ll be honest) to some
professors after class. This helped me narrow down exactly what I needed to ask my interview
subjects in order to get what they thought of the subject. Once I had the definitions that I needed
for both educational and historical discourses I was able to craft questions and make them special
to each interview subject. I had one subject already in mind from last semester, a Professor
Kellam, who seemed like he knew a lot about these discourses. I sent him an email about the
interview and he responded quickly and was very happy to meet with me. The second interview
was harder however, because I didn’t have any good subjects in mind. I had only had one other
history class at App State and I still didn’t know the professor well enough to ask her for an
interview (thanks anxiety!!). So for this I suffered but the universe still helped me out with Dr.
Speakman.
After I had the interviews done and the information that I needed, I was able to start on
the infographic. I wanted something clean and easily readable so I went with the black and white
theme in order to streamline the infographic. With history being a subject with a lot of words and
sometimes boring information I wanted something that anyone could read and understand. I also
wanted quite a few pictures and a very linear design so that scrolling down would make logical
sense and would take you on this journey through my thought process. I very much enjoyed
putting it together and making things flow smoothly and simply.
Finally, the use of the artifact was to be a tangible example of what history could look
like in the classroom. I wanted both of my discourses to come together at the end and make sense
as to why they were there. The thesis that I chose was long and boring but it was a really cool
example of how history was being studied in the classroom, especially on something as
complicated as the Holocaust (which is conveniently almost my field of study). I thought that the
artifact ended the entire infographic really nicely and that even though it was long, it could be
condensed quite well (though I didn’t do the best job of that). All in all, I was pretty proud of my
infographic and my project because of the way that the information flows and logically makes
sense.

Worksheet

1. What kinds of “artifacts” or textual products that are produced in your discipline and
think about which one you might want to analyze for Project 1.
- I picked a doctoral thesis about teaching a controversial historical event in a classroom
in order to understand how both fields came together in harmony.
2. What kinds of citation practices are utilized? Why?
- Chicago style because the author and publisher are the most important aspects of a
historical scholarly source. This style helps you find both of these easily and quickly.
3. How does it help you evaluate sources?
- It helps you see if they are written by a reputable author or from a reputable publishing
company, which is mainly university presses.
4. What kind of words/terms/language patterns, genres, and mediums are unique to your
field? Use specific examples/quotes from your artifact. Has this shared language changed
over time (think the last 10-20 years)? For example, in communications and journalism,
the discourse community has changed radically with the advent of social media with new
language being introduced all the time and the medium has shifted radically from print to
digital forms, which has introduces all sorts of new words and language.
- Historical discourse normally consists of terms that are specific to your field and style
of history. This can be pretty diverse, take the instance of studying Jewish history. One
scholar can study Jewish history from a religious standpoint and use very different
lingo and verbiage than a shoer studying Jewish history from a cultural standpoint. The
other aspect to be considered is the moving of all documents and artifacts to digital
archives. Many historians like to study things by hand and actually experience these
artifacts but the convenience of simply accessing them with a few clicks is a very
alluring proposition. I don’t believe that actual physical archives will go down, but
they will definitely begin to be less prominent.
5. How will you reach out to them: by email? Office hours? By telephone? If you email, be
sure to provide a heading and a closing and be sure to give them enough time to answer
your questions (so send the questions off asap).
- I reached out to Professor Kellam by email and then made an appointment with him,
while with Dr. Speakman, I ran into him and had a surprise interview.
6. Format: What is the structure or layout of the text? Is there an abstract? Are there key
terms? Are there sections or is it one long text? Columns? Endnotes or footnotes?
- This style of artifact was very historically technical and had an abstract and key terms
and everything. It was set up to be very logical and step by step, especially because
part of the paper was an experiment, which meant that there had to be a process written
out and explained in order to make sense of the entire thesis.
7. Language: How would you characterize the tone of the text? The writing style? Is the
passive voice or active voice dominant? Is the first person or third person dominant? Are
the sentences long or short? Is there use of figurative language such as metaphors and
similes? Offer a sample sentence or two as evidence for analysis.
- The thesis was incredibly formal and well written. It felt like reading a technical paper
and one that didn’t have a lot of tone or one specific writing style.